Acronis TrueImage is the fullest-featured backup app you can find, but it includes potentially dangerous options that should probably be used only by professionals, not the home and small-business audience to which it's targeted.

If you judge software by features alone, Acronis TrueImage 2014 blows away the competition. Compared with highly-focused disk-imaging apps like ShadowProtect Desktop, TrueImage performs every backup and restore task you can imagine and some that you probably can't imagine. It does image backups of whole disks and partitions, file backups of individual folders and files, and even non-stop backups of every change that you make to a specific file or folder or group of files.

Acronis TrueImage 2014 comes with a multitude of additional tools including a proprietary Acronis boot manager, a proprietary "recovery zone" that TrueImage can use when you can't boot to Windows, and a management utility for Windows' built-in boot manager. It includes folder synchronization tools. It can send backup files via e-mail. It even offers its own cloud-based storage system, Acronis Cloud, with 5 GB of free storage, or 50 GB for $29.99 per year, or 250 GB for $49.99 per year—lower prices than most rival storage services. And a Premium version ($79.99) adds tools for migrating systems from one machine to another and working with Windows dynamic disks.

Imaging InterfaceDespite its complexity, TrueImage starts up with a simple three-panel dialog with buttons for backing up a system, recovering data, and backing up to Acronis Cloud. These buttons lead to moderately complex menus, but beginners should have little trouble navigating them, as long as they accept the defaults. Experienced users will understand options like "Switch to disk mode," which lets you setup backups of an entire physical disk, not just individual partitions inside it, but keep your tech-challenged relatives away from it. The default settings create a full backup, followed by "incremental" backups that back up only files that changed since the full backup. Advanced options—all of them on colorful, spacious menus—let advanced users choose potentially data-saving options like one that makes a spare copy of a backup in a separate location.

If you want to perform a file-or-folder backup instead of a full-partition or full-disk backup, you have to go back to the opening screen, and click on a "Backup and Recovery" tab where a toolbar offers all the app's different backup menus and the main window gives details on backups performed earlier or currently in progress. A separate tab for Synchronization provides similar options for setting up local or cloud-based file sync operations, all of when went smoothly in my tests.

Restoration & OptionsRestoring a partition or files is an easy matter of choosing the backup image and clicking a few buttons. If you're using the Acronis Cloud for backup storage, a web interface opens in your browser, closely resembling the Dropbox Web interface, and you can choose to restore one or more files, share a link to it, or recover an earlier version. What I missed from the app's Recover interface is an option to mount a backed-up drive image with a drive letter and copy files from it, as I routinely do with ShadowProtect Desktop images. Acronis provides this feature, but keeps it well-hidden in a cluttered Tools and Utilities tab on the main menu, where you can scroll down and find it under "Image Mounting."

Other tools and utilities on the same menu include an ingenious Try&Decide option that "sandboxes" your hard disk so you can make install software or make other changes without permanently writing the changes to disk unless you decide to do so. I'm not sure I would recommend trusting your disk to something as intrusive as this, but it worked perfectly in a brief test. Other tools are even more intrusive, like one that creates a proprietary "secure zone" on your disk for preserving recovery data.

I intensely distrust any software that makes proprietary changes in my hard disk structure, and, a few years ago, I rendered a system unbootable by installing the Acronis Secure Zone and then performing other changes to the disk without first uninstalling the Secure Zone. Maybe that problem has been fixed in the meantime, but I won't trust my disk to this kind of proprietary modification, and I don't think you should either.

Automatic Renewal Program: Your subscription will continue without interruption for as long as you wish, unless
you instruct us otherwise. Your subscription will automatically renew at the end of the term unless you authorize
cancellation. Each year, you'll receive a notice and you authorize that your credit/debit card will be charged the
annual subscription rate(s). You may cancel at any time during your subscription and receive a full refund on all
unsent issues. If your credit/debit card or other billing method can not be charged, we will bill you directly instead. Contact Customer Service

//our current issue

Select Term:

24 issues for $29.99 ONLY $1.25 an issue! Lock in Your Savings!

12 issues for $19.99ONLY $1.67 an issue!

State

Country

This transaction is secure

Automatic Renewal Program: Your subscription will continue without interruption for as long as you wish, unless
you instruct us otherwise. Your subscription will automatically renew at the end of the term unless you authorize
cancellation. Each year, you'll receive a notice and you authorize that your credit/debit card will be charged the
annual subscription rate(s). You may cancel at any time during your subscription and receive a full refund on all
unsent issues. If your credit/debit card or other billing method can not be charged, we will bill you directly instead. Contact Customer Service